The truth of the matter is that pretty much everything we throw in our blue bins either gets exported (and ends up usually in a landfill) or we dump it in a landfill.

From the article above, which is really enlightening btw:

A recent study by Deloitte for Environment and Climate Change Canada shows there is much room for improvement: Only 9 per cent of the 3.2 million tonnes of plastic waste generated each year in Canada is recycled. As much as 2.8-million tonnes – the weight of 24 CN Towers – ends up in Canadian landfills.

I am a bit of lazy recycler myself. I often do not rinse out containers and if it's paper or plastic, it goes in the blue bin. Everything else in the grey bin. Which isn't as bad as more and more people just dump their week's garbage in whatever bin is being picked up that week. (Here in Toronto, one week is blue bin, the subsequent week is grey bin.) Green bins (which are organic wastes, are every week.)

But here's the thing.......

I get angry how much plastic is being forced upon us. EVERYTHING is over packaged in the name of display ease and preventing damage to product by encasing them in their own custom water bottle like packaging that you need a band saw to open. Many times, I have to use a box cutter to get into whatever package and the cut package becomes as sharp as a sword and I usually manage to cut myself. There is simply no need for this over packaging. Case in point, a couple of weeks ago, I bought a new tape measure (Milwaukee are you listening) and it was attached to this plastic backing (water bottle plastic) that was insanely hard and tough. It probably took me 30 minutes to separate the packaging from the tape measure. IT"S A TAPE MEASURE FOR CRYING OUT LOUD, it does not need to be encased in a water bottle.

Which leads me to water bottles. I drink bottled water. I dink a LOT of bottled water. I do this because a couple of years ago, I gave up drinking coca cola (which was worse than giving up heroin) and chocolate milk due to sugar content and too much sugar in my diet. I only drink water now. Nothing else. It's boring, but I'm used to it. But I won't drink tap water because I'm one of the lucky people that have seen the insides of water mains and if you had ever seen the inside of water main, you'd never drink tap water either.

But here we go again, it's a plastic throw away bottle. Like every other soft dink out there. Kajillions of drink bottles every day go to the landfill. (You think they get recycled, but the truth is that the don't. They end up in a dump, or worse, the ocean and whales end up dying when they ingest plastic. Sorry to burst your happy bubble.)

The time has come to ban plastic bottles and all plastic packaging.

(Sorry if you work in the plastic industry, but it's evil shit.)

It's all about consumer convenience. So what is the solution? Well, maybe it's back to the future on this. Back to glass bottles with a buck a bottle deposit on every bottle to make sure people don't thrown them out. Either that, or aluminum cans because aluminum largely does get recycled. But I'd be more for glass.

Likewise, enough packaging everything like it's going on a trip to Mars. I read somewhere that in Germany, consumers are allowed to open their products once they have paid for them in the store and leave all the packing with the store. The stores don't want to deal with it all, so they have pushed back against the manufacturers. Brilliant. I'm all for it.

Reduce, refuse, recycle. The bitter truth is that only the first two of those 3 words actually work. The last word is just a big lie to make you feel better.

Plastic packaging is a problem. Single use water bottles are also a problem.

But, the recycling industry has to step it up and become better. They should be using 100% of glass, either by melting it down or by crushing it. Glass would make a better substrate for road construction than stone. Plastic can be mixed into asphalt.

I am curious about cardboard, because Amazon and on-line stores have increased the number of boxes by a lot.

Paper and junk mail is just as prevalent as ever too.

Aluminum and lead acid batteries are the things that do get recycled the best. Other scrap metal does as well.

Plastic packaging is a problem. Single use water bottles are also a problem.

But, the recycling industry has to step it up and become better. They should be using 100% of glass, either by melting it down or by crushing it. Glass would make a better substrate for road construction than stone. Plastic can be mixed into asphalt.

I am curious about cardboard, because Amazon and on-line stores have increased the number of boxes by a lot.

Paper and junk mail is just as prevalent as ever too.

Aluminum and lead acid batteries are the things that do get recycled the best. Other scrap metal does as well.

Really, we're not going to stop the momentum on it's use...especially the throw away packaging.

The only solution is to use the invented processes that break down these wastes to oil (which can be used and stored more effectively)
and make it more inexpensive and leverage using that oil as a substitute for yet unextracted oil.

The problem is, for ANY waste/energy. until you find an inexpensive convenient useful solution that can surpass the established industry and get a new infrastructure/process built up
you'll never displace the selfish neglect of the population as a whole and the industry/business that profits from it.